Is the mafia finally losing its grip on Italy? After death of ‘Devil’ Sicilian Godfather and mega trial conviction of 200 gangsters, expert says country can dream of an end decades-long mob rule

• Conviction of more than 200 mobsters sparked hopes of getting rid of mafia

They have brought decades of bloodshed to Italian streets, terrorised civilians and corrupted politicians with brutal murder and torture being their tactics of choice.

But when more than 200 mafia gangsters were brought to justice in a historic mega trial last year there were hopes for a new dawn in a country blighted by the underworld.

The landmark trial and resulting convictions were an ‘important step’ to rid Italy of the mafia, said Laura Garavini, a former Italian senator who spent several years of her career on the government’s anti-mafia committee.

She told MailOnline ‘it is possible’ to have a mafia-free Italy, and that she is optimistic this could be achieved within the next 20 or 30 years if her country ‘continues to fight against organised crime like it has over the last decade’.

‘The mafia has been created by people and, as other man-made things, can be brought to an end,’ she added.

Referring to the success in undermining the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia, she explained how criminal prosecution, better legislation and the cultural reaction of the public have contributed to ‘important progress’ against organised crime. 

Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was considered the ‘last godfather’ of the Cosa Nostra, was finally captured in January last year after 30 years on the run and died of colon cancer just eight months later. 

The Cosa Nostra were a powerful player in Sicily until a ‘maxi-trial’ saw 338 mafiosi convicted in 1987 and pushed Messina Denaro to go into hiding. The success of the trial fired on hopes that his could be achieved again after the recent mega-trial against ‘Ndrangheta mobsters, based in Calabria.

‘This is proof that you can successfully fight against organised crime and win. Other groups like ‘Ndrangheta, Camorra or Sacra Corona Unita are still really active, so it is necessary to not give up. But the goal? It’s achievable.’

Ms Garavini was among Italian MPs calling for the introduction of an anti-mafia code for candidates standing in elections in 2010.

Despite her optimism about winning the fight against organised crime, she warned in an interview with German magazine Spiegel that ‘we are still very far from a final blow against the mafia’.

‘The trials alone won’t be enough, even though they are very important to break up those structures [in mafia groups].

‘History shows that even from inside a prison, mafia bosses can still exert their power, therefore trials alone won’t suffice.

‘What is also valuable and necessary is a cultural revolution within the population, which was very successful in Sicily. One has to show that the mafia’s power over people can be broken when victims speak out.’ 

Professor Frederico Varese, who teaches criminology at the University of Oxford, has written extensively about organised crime and mafia associations.

He agrees with Ms Garavini that ‘it is certainly possible’ to have a mafia-free Italy, but said ‘the question is how not when’.

Anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, who was assassinated in 1992 on the orders of Messina Denaro, said the mafia was a social phenomenon – a definition that is still in use now. 

‘Like social phenomena can emerge and thrive, they can also end,’ Mr Varese told MailOnline. 

‘The policy to arrest these people is of course very important, but if you do not tackle the social, political and economic reasons why the mafia existed, you would have new people coming up. 

‘It’s not enough. What we should do is to regenerate the trust between the people of southern Italy, Sicily and Calabria in particular with the Italian state.

‘The problem is that the Italian state is not working. It is bankrupt and inefficient. On average, it takes 12 years for a civil dispute to be settled.’

With the mafia, this was much quicker, and therefore ‘there is a strong incentive for people to use the mafia to settle everyday disputes’.

Mr Varese said: ‘Until the states really performs that function, and it is not performed by an alternative, illegal organisation like the mafia, then I don’t think we will ever settle.’

‘We think of the mafia as a criminal organisation, but it’s really a form of extralegal governance. They govern relationships in the territory; economic, political and also social relationships. 

‘They get their strength from this governance function… Until the state governs instead of the mafia, they will always be there.’

However, other experts have little faith that the mafia could ever truly be eradicated. 

Professor Dr Anna Sergi from the Sociology Department at the University of Essex told MailOnline: ‘You can maim and destroy mafia associations or mafia groups with all the convictions but you won’t get rid of mafia behaviours as these are very human behaviours that exist everywhere and will tend to re-organise.’

She explained that an important factor in the fight against the mafia and organised crime were behaviours like intimidation or a quest for power.

‘Until there are weaknesses in society and until there is capitalism as economic policy and politics we will have mafia-type phenomena,’ she added.

‘At best we can try and make mafia-type organisations less active for a short while, but I am afraid I do not share the optimism – perhaps because I come from Calabria and I see that before fighting mafia groups and behaviours you need to fix society’s inequalities and hunger/anger in the population.’

In southern Vibo Valentia, where the more than 200 mafiosi were convicted and sentenced last November, the president of the court, Brigida Cavasino, read out the names of the guilty and their sentences for over an hour and a half.

The sentences ranged from 30 years to a few months, as defendants incarcerated in prisons across the country watched via video link.

Prosecutors had asked for guilty verdicts against 322 mafia members operating in the Calabrian province and their white-collar collaborators, requesting 30 years for a dozen of the ‘Ndrangheta’s most seasoned decision-makers including those who go by the nicknames ‘The Wolf’, ‘Fatty’ and ‘Sweetie’.

But just 200 were convicted and sentenced and only four top members received the maximum penalty. The remainder were either formally or effectively acquitted.

One of the trial’s most high-profile defendants, 70-year-old former parliamentarian and defence lawyer Giancarlo Pittelli, accused of being a fixer for the mafia, received 11 years, short of the 17 years prosecutors requested.

A few dozen family members sat in the back of the vast, narrow courtroom, squinting at the television screens for a glimpse of their loved ones, and occasionally crying out with joy over a light sentence.

The verdicts – which can be appealed twice – capped Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades and mark the most significant blow to date against one of the world’s most powerful organised crime syndicates, which enjoys a near-monopoly on the European cocaine trade.

Ms Garavini said while the landmark trial and its success was focused on a small area, it achieved that a province that ‘was tightly in the hands of the ‘Ndrangheta for decades’ has been freed of these constraints.

‘Even though it’s a locally-focused success, it is still very important,’ she added. 

Mr Varese also praised the prosecutions as ‘very successful’, adding: ‘They have had a real effect in reducing [the mafias’] power.’ 

The mega trial started almost three years ago inside an ultra-secure bunker courtroom in the southern region of Calabria, where the powerful ‘Ndrangheta organisation was originally based. 

Since then, the court of Vibo Valentia has heard thousands of hours of testimony, including from more than 50 former mafia operatives turned state witnesses.

The witnesses have detailed countless examples of the ‘Ndrangheta’s brutality and its stranglehold over the local population, whether carrying out violent ambushes, shaking down business owners, rigging public tenders, stockpiling weapons, collecting votes or passing kickbacks to the powerful.

Those who opposed the mafia found dead puppies, dolphins or goat heads dumped on their doorsteps, sledgehammers taken to storefronts or cars torched. Some were murdered, their bodies never found, while others were beaten or fired at.

Among the accused are the alleged accomplices of Mafia boss Luigi Mancuso, known as ‘The Uncle’, who have a host of nicknames including ‘The Wolf’, ‘Fatty’, ‘Sweetie’, ‘Blondie’, ‘Little Goat’ and ‘The Wringer’. Mancuso, 69, was cut from the defendants list last year to be tried separately. 

The trial took place in a specially constructed high-security bunker. Part of an industrial park in the city of Lamezia Terme, the bunker is so vast that 20 video screens were anchored to the ceiling so participants could view the proceedings.

The mobsters and their white collar collaborators were sentenced for crimes that include drug and arms trafficking, extortion and mafia association, a term in Italy’s penal code for members of organized crime groups. Others were charged with acting in complicity with the ‘Ndrangheta without actually being a member. 

The charges grew out of an investigation of 12 clans linked to convicted mafia boss Mancusco, who served 19 years in Italian prison for his role in leading what investigators allege is one of the ‘Ndrangheta’s most powerful crime families, based in the town of Vibo Valentia.

The ‘Ndrangheta of Vibo Valentia was entrenched in the local economy, feared by business owners and farmers, and protected by white-collar professionals and politicians. 

Indeed, based almost entirely on blood ties, the ‘Ndrangheta was substantially immune to turncoats for decades, but the ranks of those turning state’s evidence are becoming more substantial. In the current trial, they include a relative of Mancuso’s.

Several dozen informants in the case came from the ‘Ndrangheta, while others formerly belonged to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra. 

The informants – a relatively rare phenomenon within the ‘Ndrangheta due to blood ties between members – recounted how weapons were hidden in cemetery chapels and ambulances used to transport drugs, and municipal water supplies diverted to marijuana crops. 

Mr Varese analysed: ‘This particular trial tackled the bond between father and son. At least six people have been testifying against their own family, so that’s a certain step forward in breaking this family bond, because you don’t testify against your own family. 

‘But we are still back to the same problem as before and we have to address them, otherwise it won’t be the end of the story.’ 

Hundreds of lawyers and a few dozen members of the media attended the sentencing on Monday in the heavily secured courtroom bunker in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme.

Also present was Rocco Mangiardi, 67, a local businessman and one of the first to denounce the ‘Ndrangheta for extortion before a judge in 2009.

Mangiardi, who has lived under police escort ever since, lamented the low turnout for the trial’s most important moment.

‘This courtroom should be filled with citizens,’ he said. ‘To show the judges that we’re on their side and then to tell the mafiosi with their presence ‘We don’t want you’.’ 

The ‘Ndrangheta organised crime syndicate now holds almost a monopoly on cocaine importation in Europe, according to anti-mafia prosecutors who led the investigation in southern Italy. 

The organisation also has bases in North and South America and is active in Africa, Italian prosecutors maintain, and ‘Ndrangheta figures have been arrested in recent years around Europe and in Brazil and Lebanon. 

Despite the large number of defendants, the trial wasn’t Italy’s biggest one involving alleged mobsters.

In 1986, 475 alleged members of the Sicilian Mafia went on trial in a similarly constructed bunker in Palermo. The proceedings resulted in more than 300 convictions and 19 life sentences. 

That trial helped reveal many of the brutal methods and murderous strategies of the island’s top mob bosses, including sensational killings that bloodied the Palermo area during years of power struggles.

In contrast, this trial involving the ‘Ndrangheta was aimed at securing convictions and sentences based on alleged acts of collusion among mobsters and local politicians, public officials, businessmen and members of secret lodges to show how deeply rooted the syndicate is in Calabria. 

‘The relevance (of this trial) is enormous,’ Italian lawmaker former anti-mafia chief prosecutor and lawmaker Federico Cafiero De Raho, a former chief anti-mafia prosecutor, said. 

‘First of all, because every trial against the ‘ndrangheta gives a very significant message to the territory, which is not only the Calabrian one, but the national territory.’

‘But it has repercussions also at a European and world level, because the ‘Ndrangheta is one of the strongest organizations in the world, able to manage the international traffic of narcotics, as well as many other activities,’ Cafiero De Raho added.

Awash in cocaine trafficking revenues, the ‘Ndrangheta has gobbled up hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, car dealerships and other businesses throughout Italy, especially in Rome and the country’s affluent north, criminal investigations have revealed.

The buying spree spread across Europe as the syndicate sought to launder illicit revenues but also to make ‘clean’ money by running legitimate businesses, including in the tourism and hospitality sectors, investigators alleged.

‘Arrests allow their activities to be halted for a time, but the investigations determine the need for further investigations each time,’ Cafiero De Raho said.

Mafia experts estimated that the ‘Ndrangheta, made up of approximately 150 Calabrian families and their associates, bring in more than 50 billion euros (£43 billion) annually around the world from drug trafficking, usury, syphoning public funds and extortion.

In Calabria, the ‘Ndrangheta has crept into practically all areas of public life, from city hall and hospitals to the courts. But its scope is much wider and the ‘Ndrangheta now operates in more than 40 countries, experts say.

Relying on frontmen, shell companies and favours from the elite, the ‘Ndrangheta reinvests illegal gains in the legitimate economy, cementing its power.

For the first time in such trials, the defendants list includes many non-mafia members, including a high-ranking police official, mayors and other public servants and businessmen.

Highest-profile is 70-year-old ex-parliamentarian and defence lawyer Giancarlo Pittelli, accused of being a fixer for the mafia and a go-between with the world of politics, finance and illegal Masonic lodges.